May 3, 2011

When Journalism Is ‘Churnalism’ – Quote of the Day / Nick Davies

Linda Polman indicts humanitarian-aid abuses and journalists who turn a blind eye to them in herThe Crisis Caravan (Metropolitan, 2010). In this excerpt, she quotes a former employee of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) who saw the “churnalism”:

“Do aid workers use journalists? Of course, they do, said Jacques de Milliano, former director of the Dutch MSF. ‘To raise funds. It’s the job of journalists to provide balanced reporting, to refuse to prostitute themselves to aid organizations. There ought to be an element of journalistic pride.’

“Journalism seems to be moving in precisely the opposite direction. Costs are cut and standards are eroded by media proprietors, resulting in what the British journalist Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News calls ‘churnalism’; in other words, ‘journalists failing to perform the simple basic functions of their profession; quite unable to tell their readers the truth about what is happening on their patch. This is journalists who are no longer out gathering but who are reduced instead to passive processors of whatever material comes their way, churning out stories, whether real event or PR artifice, important or trivial, true or false.’”